Photo by John Lehmann

Vancouver farmer’s rooftop and backyard gardens are being heralded as the next generation of agriculture in the city

Frances Bula
Globe and Mail
Jan. 03, 2010

Take one Saskatchewan farm boy and move him to the big city. Add a Vancouver condo building’s unused rooftop garden and several vacant backyards.

The result is urban farmer Ward Teulon, also known as CityFarmBoy on his website, a 45-year-old former agrologist who has put his farming skills to work in the middle of some of Vancouver’s densest neighbourhoods.

He produces $30,000 worth of vegetables, herbs and fruit a year on 8,000 square feet of land in garden plots around the city.

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“The Thomason family has been farming in the same part of Richland Parish Louisiana for almost two-hundred years, but our 1/10th acre urban eco-micro farm is located in historic downtown Ypsilanti, Michigan. We are located just a few miles east of Ann Arbor. We raise Mini-Nubian-Nigerian-Dwarf goats for milk and meat, Hubbard ISA Brown French hens for eggs, and Lionhead Dwarf rabbits as pets. We grow organic vegetables for sale including: garlic, mixed salad greens, kale, spinach, Amish paste and Sungold cherry tomatoes, broccoli, peppers and various squashes.”

Collective efforts

BY CURT GUYETTE
Metro Times
April 9, 2009

At first glance, Ypsilanti resident Peter Thomason and his family don’t have a lot in common with the residents of the Detroit collective known as Trumbullplex.

Thomason, who’s in his mid-50s, is a politically conservative, NRA card-carrying, churchgoing father of 10 who teaches construction management at Eastern Michigan University. Trumbullplex, on the city’s near west side, is an anarchist housing collective and show space inhabited by 11 people (at the moment), none of whom are older than 30. And none of them, it’s safe to say, belongs to the NRA.

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